Cannabis has become a strong component in the Desert Hot Springs economy, and on Wednesday voters got to hear their city council and mayoral candidates talk about what the industry's future should look like.

The evening was broken down into two forums, both hosted by the Coachella Valley Cannabis Alliance Network, a trade organization and lobbying group that works with marijuana companies and related businesses across the valley.

Mayor Scott Matas and challenger Stephen Giboney faced off in the second debate of the evening. The first forum featured four of the five candidates vying for the two open city council seats. Peter Tsachipinis did not attend.

While the candidates reached consensus on several issues, the forum was defined in part by candidate and former mayor Adam Sanchez criticizing the current city council and distancing himself from their policies and the other candidates who shared opinions on those policies.

He expressed strong support for lowering taxes on the cannabis industry and said he thought state regulations would “handcuff the city.” Sanchez also said he thinks the city “went too conservative” after allowing cannabis into the city and lost a competitive edge over other valley cities trying to attract cannabis businesses.

Jeff Homolya examines marijuana plants at Canndescent in Desert Hot Springs, Calif., where he works as the Cultivation Manager, March 7, 2018.(Photo: Zoe Meyers/The Desert Sun)

“We are killing ourselves folks, if we don’t get a new council in there that can do the right things,” he added.

Other candidates did express support for some of the same ideas as Sanchez. Jim Fitzgerald also said he supported lowering taxes, especially on cultivation, to give locals a chance to get into a portion of the industry often dominated by larger companies with deep-pocketed investors.

Fitzgerald raised the idea of lowering the tax on growing from $25 per square foot to $10 per square foot, and possibly $5 for sites under 3,000 square feet. He said the city needed to continue to support the cannabis industry, which would, in turn, buoy the wider local economy.

“Bringing in economic development, cannabis is a huge jump starter for that,” he said. “These people will have jobs and they’ll need a place to live and to shop.”

Gary Gardner, like Fitzgerald and Sanchez, expressed support for cannabis lounges and said the industry as a whole fit in with Desert Hot Springs’ reputation as a wellness destination. He said the council should encourage the "canna-tourism" industry, which meshed with with the city’s mineral spas and surrounding hiking trails and public lands.

“I believe that we can be the Napa Valley for cannabis of this part of California,” Gardner said.

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Jeff Homolya examines marijuana plants at Canndescent in Desert Hot Springs, Calif., where he works as the Cultivation Manager, March 7, 2018.(Photo: Zoe Meyers/The Desert Sun)

Incumbent Council member Jan Pye was the one person who said she did not support consumption lounges, since she didn’t know how that would work, she said, but expressed strong support for growing and maintaining the industry in other capacities.

“Frankly I don’t think (cannabis is) going to hurt anything, it’s going to enhance it. So far, as we’re concerned, we have a health oriented city. We have our water, we have our spas and cannabis automatically, necessarily works with it,” she said.

The mayoral debate was structured differently, with Matas and Giboney each getting five to 10 minutes to tell the audience generally, what their vision was for the cannabis industry and the city, should they spend the next two years as mayor.

Giboney said he couldn’t predict the future, but said the industry was still in a transition period and needed to connect to the community. He said that as mayor he could connect cannabis businesses with Desert Hot Springs dwellers to help them address the concerns of residents.

“I would like to see the cannabis industry meeting the challenges that the residents are bringing to the cannabis industry,” he said.

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Patrick Kelly, a cannabis grand master grower looks into one of his grow house in Coachella on Tuesday, April 3, 2018. Kelly is the first grower to operate a state licensed cannabis growing facility in Coachella. (Photo: Richard Lui/The Desert Sun)

He also said he hoped to see the city have a little more autonomy from the state and the federal government and to push back against regulations if they aren’t a good fit for the local community’s needs. And while he didn’t advise returning to the black market, he also cautioned cannabis operators not to get too involved with the government at any level, saying “government does not produce a lot of good things.”

Matas used part of his time to push back against criticism leveled at him and the Council — some from Sanchez, some from Giboney — that nothing was getting accomplished by the council and that it had become disconnected from the general population.

However, he also talked about the importance of the council’s previous decision to put 25 percent of all cannabis revenue into reserves and the need to continue to educate youth about cannabis and to see the industry grow and create more jobs in Desert Hot Springs.

“People sometimes say ‘the cannabis industry saved the city,’ and that’s not necessarily true. But in 2020 it’s going to be amazing,” he said.

Corinne Kennedy covers the west valley for The Desert Sun. She can be reached at Corinne.Kennedy@DesertSun.com or on Twitter @CorinneSKennedy